Staying Home for a Season

Brandon started full-time with the church and preached his first sermon last Sunday. We felt so welcomed by the congregation and they even had a potluck for us after the service.

So this has officially been my first week as a stay at home mom, or what I prefer to call my season of staying home. I am fairly confident it is not permanent (but I'll leave room for God to show me otherwise) and it's honestly something I've longed for since I became a mother and had to go back to work in October 2013.

I don't think I blogged about it much at the time, but returning to work was a struggle. Thankfully, my supervisor was really open to making the transition work for me and my baby. I wrote a post about it here.

Since I'm now staying home with two kids and didn't have much experience with staying home daily with one kiddo (only snow days), I am trying new things almost daily to see how we can make it a life-giving experience for all three of us. I don't want to watch the clock and just get through the day (more on this later). My goal is to make memories with my kids and have fun along the way!

Maggie went to daycare for about 15 months and loved it, so I am hoping to integrate some pre-school activities into our routine. I am starting out slow, with one or two activities per day. Today, we did a matching game. I've been searching on Pinterest and getting some great ideas from Lindsay via Snapchat (@lindsayhellohue).

Which brings me to the fact that I've been using Snapchat (@bbgoad) a little bit. Confession: I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. I actually had to read a blog post  and watch the video to get it. But I'm having a lot of fun with it. I can't decide if I'm being obnoxious or oversharing, but since I don't get any feedback, I just keep sharing snippets of our days. If you're on Snapchat, tell me what you think!

Lunches are also something on my list. I am pretty terrible at making my own lunch (unless there are leftovers from the night before), so I have been thinking about what would make a nutritious lunch that is also appealing to a toddler. I may be overthinking this, but going back to the desire to be fun mom (rather than striving to be supermom), I want my kids to know I put some thought into it. I'm sure I will have days of thrown together lunches, but as time allows I will take time to cut a PB and J into a star shape (see photo above).

I'd love to hear tips you may have on the stay home gig. You can tweet me (@bethbgoad) or leave a comment below.